A Year at the Chateau

Take a journey to Château-de-la-Motte Husson in the spellbinding memoir from Sunday Times bestselling authors, Dick and Angel Strawbridge.<BR><BR> Dick and Angel recount the newest and biggest challenges they faced on the journey to transforming their once derelict and abandoned château in France's Pays de la Loire into a thriving family home and sustainable business.<BR><BR> When the Covid-19 pandemic engulfs the world, the château faces a new challenge and the Strawbridges must find ways to adapt in order to keep their dream life in France alive. From the cancellation of the wedding season to finding new ways to complete renovations, living in an isolated bubble whilst continuing to film their TV series through to life after the pandemic, this is Dick and Angel at their most honest and heartfelt, revealing many details never seen on TV.<BR><BR>As entertaining, warm and irresistible as ever, Join Dick and Angel on their remarkable journey to find their family's forever home.

In January 2015 Dick and Angel Strawbridge embarked on the journey of a lifetime when they swapped their cosy two-bedroom flat in East London for a derelict château with 12 acres of land in the Loire valley.<BR><BR> Where Sunday Times bestseller A Year At The Château told the entertaining and heartwarming beginning of the family's French adventure, as they found their forever home and began to restore and renovate the dilapidated castle, Living The Château Dream is about the years of hard graft that followed. Dick and Angel leapt into action transforming Château-de-la-Motte Husson into both a thriving family home and a sustainable business, and began making their dream of rural life in a fairytale castle a reality.<BR><BR> From throwing open the shutters to new suites to exploring the walled garden, launching their wedding business and hosting guests for food lover weekends, no stone was left unturned. From the day-to-day tasks like installing a lift to the beginnings of lifelong traditions and memories such as investigating the seasonal delights of the surroundings and having a family sleepover on the moat, this much-anticipated follow-up includes many firsts for the Strawbridge family. As Dick and Angel recount stories of the renovations that took place over the next four years at the château, we start to understand the true extent of the work and skill that it has taken to make this incredible house into a much-loved home.<BR><BR> With stories of remarkable discoveries and unexpected challenges, amazing transformations and once-in-a-lifetime celebrations, this book is sure to delight, entertain and inspire fans in equal measure.

THE ENTERTAINING AND HEARTWARMING SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER.<BR><BR>Like many couples, Dick and Angel had long dreamed of living in France, but where others might settle for a modest bolthole in the French countryside, the Strawbridges fell in love with a 19th-century fairytale château, complete with 45 rooms, seven outbuildings, 12 acres of land and its own moat.<BR><BR>Throwing caution to the wind, Dick and Angel swapped their two-bedroom flat in East London for an abandoned and derelict castle in the heart of the Loire valley and embarked on the adventure of a lifetime with their two young children Arthur and Dorothy.<BR><BR>Sharing their full journey for the first time, A Year at the Château follows Dick and Angel from when they first moved to France in the depths of winter and found bedrooms infested with flies, turrets inhabited by bats, the wind rattling through cracked windows, and just one working toilet, which flushed into the moat, through to the monumental efforts that went into readying the château for their unforgettable wedding and their incredibly special first Christmas.<BR><BR>Along the way we'll read glorious descriptions of rural life in France, with charming characters, delicious food and wonderful seasonal produce, together with the extraordinary list of renovations and restorations Dick and Angel completed, many of which were never shown on TV.<BR><BR>As warm and entertaining as their much-loved show, A Year at the Château is a truly irresistible story of adventure and heart, epic ambitions and a huge amount of hard graft.